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Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Gender Equality (Equity) and 28 States

In
societies like South Sudan, the issue of gender equality (or equity) will only
be possible through political appointment. This is a society in which girls are
married off at 14, 15, 16 and polygamy is a cultural phenomenon.

For
some people, child marriage and polygamy have little to do with representation of
women in government. However, one needs to realize that the more woman gain strong
social and political views the more they are given power to stand up to some
dangers in men’s fancies. Any political and social power given to women together
with education of girls reduce child marriage and polygamy.

Men
who fancy polygamy and child marriage will continue to make sure women don’t
gain any sort of power in order for some society’s patriarchal cultural practices
to be maintained. Essentially, these practices are meant to help men control
women and keep them as objects of their fancies in whatever way they want.

In ‘western’
societies, women are still kept culturally controlled and subjugated, however,
the manner in which such subjugation is exercised is hidden within
institutional and cultural practices. In universities woman are the majority in enrollment, however, when one looks at senior positions in society, men are still dominant. Of all the S&P 500 companies, only 14.2% in senior executive
positions are women according to CNN Money.

A
woman would sacrifice her career to support her husband’s dream. This is seen
as love but it helps keep the woman in her ‘traditional’ role, in other words,
subjugated. So sometimes men exploit the natural position of women as
child-bearers and mothers and keep her down.

Women
who’ve made it to high corporate positions either have very supportive husbands
or they sacrifice the mothering aspect of womanhood in order to compete with
men. For these women, their children are raised basically by house helpers.

In
some exceptional cases, we have stay-home
dads. The number of stay-home days has been on the rise. While things are moving in the right direction in the west, the pace is
depressingly low.

When
the president of South Sudan decreed the creation of 28 states in South Sudan
and the would-be state citizens were asked to table potential candidates for
state governors, it didn’t occur to all of us that the constitutionally
mandated 25% reserved for women should be respected. All the tabled candidates
were men. In their boys’ club, as their wives cooked for them, they discussed
it among themselves.

Unless
we make sure that our wives and daughters eat at the same table with us to
allow them to have opinions with us, woman will continue to lag behind. In
South Sudanese communities, you hardly see woman and men sitting together in
the living room or on the dining table unless there’s a special occasion. How
do we expect woman to express interest when we confine them to the kitchen? How
do we expect women to be represented if we only see them as objects to be
married off at 14 and subjugated in polygamist marriages? Polygamy robs a woman
of her voice as an equal as it equates one man to X number of women.

I
sound naïve in this article but we ignore these things only to complain about
them later. Of all the 28 states, perhaps each state assumed the 25% reserved
for women would come from the other states or it just didn’t matter at all to
them.

What
gives me hope is that we are talking about the exclusion of woman in
governorship positions. I know we only had one woman governor and none after
Nyandeeng Malek of Warrap was removed by a presidential decree.

According
Grant Thornton Report, women in senior management is at 37% in Eastern Europe, 35% in Southeast Asia, and 43% in Russia. Even
the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries lead the developed: 32 % vs. 21%.

This
shows that we can do better to change the position of women in South Sudan.

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ANGELINA & ADUT ( A Novel)

Leadership, given what is happening now in South Sudan, and generally in Africa, fascinates me. And it fascinates me not in a good way but because of the sociopolitical and socioeconomic ills facing the African continent and most of the so-called 'Third World.' To me, South Sudan, now, is a classic case.Rebellion by disaffected politico-military leaders and repression by the government of South Sudan in Juba have stunted institutional development and leadership growth. This has made service provision almost irrelevant as political survival has taken primacy and supremacy. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

‘Black’ as an Identity Oversimplification and Mockery

Black as a universalized cultural identity of the African Person (AP)* is a residual effect of slave and colonial mentality; a racial/race paradigm. It is a malady I call, conservatively speaking, stuck-in-the-past syndrome of color constraints. Black could be an on-the-street ‘social identifier’ of race figures not a meaningful phenomenon of deep cultural identification on a universal scale.

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The questionnaire below is for the book I'm writing on leadership and the factors behind the South Sudanese conflict. I would want to know from South Sudanese and other interested parties what they think.

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SELF-ESTEEM AND DISCRIMINATION

As someone who grew up in war conditions and lived as a refugee for a long time, I'm sometimes considered by many people in the 'west' to be prone to (or have) low self-esteem, be poor or illiterate. Living as refugees or displaced persons, who depended on the good will of others put people in a situation where they don't think much about themselves. But that's not everyone though.

As I stood by our front desk at my place work talking about Race and Identity in relation to my book, Is 'Black' Really Beautiful?, the issue of why many African peoples in North America become so over-sensitive when racial issues come up! For many rational people, this owes its origin to slavery and racial segregation.

But one of my coworkers, a person of European descent, was surprised to realize that her 'black' friend, a very intelligent woman, easily becomes irritated by simple things she [friend] considers racist. The friend considers any mention of a watermelon racist; and complains a lot about 'whiteprivilege.' This means that discrimination is considered something 'whites' don't face because of 'white privilege.' In any discussion between 'blacks' and 'whites', 'white privilege' issue comes up!

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RACE AND HEALTH

May 27, 2018 - Race permeates our society and it affects almost all aspects of our lives, private or public. Whether we embrace it or dismiss it, it continues to rare its ugly head any time issues of interest come up. It’s controversial and some people prefer that we don’t talk about it not for what it means but for what it does. But nothing can get solved if not discussed. It’s the way of the world.

May 27, 2018 - Juba town is the seat of the National Government. The host is Jubek state Government. With the decentralized system of governance adopted, we have a municipality administrative unit running the affairs of Juba. Simply put, if there is anything that does not go well in Juba town and its surroundings, it is the Municipality that bears the blame for what may be a dereliction of duty. Now, if you see the internal roads, they are deplorable and impassable.

April 11, 2018 - Leadership, given what is happening now in South Sudan, and generally in Africa, fascinates me. And it fascinates me not in a good way but because of the sociopolitical and socioeconomic ills facing the African continent and most of the so-called 'Third World.' To me, South Sudan, now, is a classic case.Rebellion by disaffected politico-military leaders and repression by the government of South Sudan in Juba have stunted institutional development and leadership growth.